BzzAgent's WOM guarantee
Over the last five years or so, word of mouth marketing has become much more common, but a question mark hangs heavy over its effectiveness. Sure, influential texts such as Fred Reichheld’s ‘The Ultimate Question’ (where the question is: ‘would you recommend this company's products or service?’) have hammered home the influence of a positive personal recommendation. Meanwhile, a negative one will result in bad karma plaguing all your houses…
Now BzzAgent, a word of mouth marketing agency with outlets in the US and the UK, is throwing down the gauntlet to advertisers to show just how powerful word of mouth can be. Through its WOM Impact Guarantee, BzzAgent is suggesting that word of mouth marketing will trump other media in terms of its success in improving brand awareness, consumer opinion, purchase intent and actual sales. If BzzAgent fails to beat the competition by at least 20%, the agency will reimburse advertisers for their costs. The guarantee is currently available to US clients only.
Dave Balter, the CEO of BzzAgent, expects up to 12 companies to take up the guarantee. He told Contagious: ‘We wanted to put our money where our mouth is by targeting those marketers who are still questioning whether word of mouth is something they should be doing.’
The company, which has 40,000 agents working in the UK, and a whopping 425,000 in the US, doesn’t pay agents or provide them with scripts (although they must disclose their affiliation to BzzAgent). Balter says: ‘We look to harness the honest power of a real dialogue.’
Advertisers that are already on board with word of mouth get some eye-poppingly amazing results – one yoghurt brand that used it in the UK introduced the product to 210,000 consumers and generated anestimated £200,000 in product sales. Yet the trouble, says Steve Barton, president of WOM UK, the word of mouth marketing association in the UK, is that big multinationals (P&G, Masterfoods and GlaxoSmithKline, to name but three) which use WOM don’t flag up their results. ‘These organisations that have traditionally depended on TV are getting into WOM but they’re doing it quietly. They’re not giving up on TV; they’re just seeing that an integrated campaign with WOM offers more value.’
Commenting on BzzAgent’s guarantee, Barton says: ‘That’s classic Balter. It should help make BzzAgent more famous as a brand and it will get people to think seriously about WOM marketing and consider it.’
We think
that BzzAgent’s guarantee is an excellent marketing stunt at a time
when budgets are being revised and often slashed – just look at this
week’s Bellwether Report in the UK. But the case for
WOM would be so much more persuasive if results were being shared by
heavyweight clients which have had a good experience. Come on, don’t be
shy, you know who you are…
